X-Ray "see under your clothes" surveillance
Thanks to Nick Leaton for pointing out another dubious "see under your clothes" surveillance device being tested by the Metropolitan Police on the British public, similar in many ways to the Passive Millimetre Wave Radar Camera that we have reported on previously
The BBC article How revealing is an X-ray scanner?
has an illustration of what, under the Voyeurism clause of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 would be defined as a "tent" or "other temporary or moveable structrure".
The image processing software is alleged to have an "electronic fig leaf" capability, but this is only for the actual display, and there is no guarantee that people's privacy will not be abused by storing images of their "naked" bodies digitally.
If children are scanned like this, then these images , even with the "fig leaf" are indecent child porn , under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and those people who assist in its production face up to 2 years in jail.
Even adults privacy e.g. about their weight loss. or gain or possible pregnancy, is at risk if the same person is identified and scans from different times or dates are compared.
This type of X-Ray machine is of no use in detecting "drug mule" couriers who swallow condoms full of cocaine etc.
The Rapiscan Secure 1000 scanner uses backscattered X-Rays, which although they claim to use a harmless dose, nevertheless it is using X-Ray radiation on human beings, not on baggage or cargo.
Since the device is from the USA, it is likely that the small print of any contract of sale or hire of such a machine will specify US courts, so that the manufacturers can gain exemption from civil liability for causing false alarms, or for failing to detect weapons or explosives or for accidentally damaging the health of those being scanned or that of the nearby operators, under the notorious so called SAFETY Act (Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act) of 2002